2018 was the year that cryptocurrency enthusiasts learned the hard way: there are no free rides in life.
Period.
What cryptocurrency represents at its core is a value system built on a mechanism for accountability.
In that sense, cryptocurrency addresses the fundamental problem with fiat money, the problem of no accountability around the value mechanism affixed to our quality of life standards.
If the follies in life lay in the dichotomies of life, then can we not imagine the folly of the world Over? The dichotomy is that we use paper money as our medium of exchange and yet we have no idea of how much the total evaluation of all the money is out there. How can we ever get along as people when the fundamental tool we use to engage in exchange with one another dwells in a context of ignorance in terms of just how much is out there and where it comes from?
That's the folly, or the silly part in our collective chaos: We think we can have order in the world when our universal value component that we use to engage in exchange with one another dwells outside of order.
People still argue about gold not backing money without understanding that money needs no backing other than our universal understanding of what money is intended for.
Think about it: If gold backed money, then what backed gold? Nothing more than people attributing value to gold, that's what. But gold as an everyday and universal tool for exchange is like carrying a brick to buy a feather. Thus, money waa introduced and originally backed by gold as way to slide money into the game of exchange to make exchange easier.
And to give governments control over our lives. The control was accomplished not by the money itself, but over time as the amount of money in circulation became impossible to track. That's when governments started throwing shade and creating confusion around the money. By distorting the truth about our underlying mechanism for exchange, governments could manipulate the people and get away with it.
Thus, cryptocurrency was borne as a way to establish not accountability around THE universal value component- but as a way to prove that it's possible to establish accountability around the universal value component.
Fundamentally, governments are aware of cryptocurrency's blockchain technology and its true intentions to establish accountability around our universal value component- but if government allow for accountability around the tool we use to engage in exchange, then how could governments control and manipulate the people?
Governments lose their relevancy the more people are in control of the exchange process, thus governments seized control of any possibility for the citizens to have accountability around the universal value system by labeling money a "security" then using broad and undefined terminologies to define what a security is.
By defining money as a "security" governments could then establish laws borne out of ignorance and laws that made no sense around the "security".
For example, when the SEC seized Traffic Monsoon it did so by labeling TM as using a security in the form of a Ponzi. Yet, TM was a 100% revenue sharing business model. TM had no outlet for the revenue it generated except for the dispersement back to members accounts who'd bought into TM to help it grow.
Even Charles Scoville, the owner of TM, made money from TM the same way everyone else did: By having an account just as anyone who earned money from TM did.
Not at one point since the government seized TM has it been shown that TM was doing anything nefarious with the money. When have you ever heard of a Ponzi that didn't do something nefarious with the money behind the scenes?
Essentially, TM was just like any business in any context. All businesses require operating capital to operate. TM's adpacks were the route that TM used for it's operating capital. That means the members were essentially pooling our resources under TM's umbrella to give it the operating capital TM needed to.operate with, and the money that was returned to our accounts was our pay for helping the business grow.
If you wanted more pay then buy more attacks and help drive the business- simple and honest to how business should work. But the government doesn't want us to work together so the government did a sneak attack and caught Charles Scoville sleeping and seized his business before he knew it.
The irony was that CS had tried to be an honest man. He met with the SEC and answered every question and gave them every answer about how TM worked. And what did the SEC do as a response? They petitioned the courts behind his back to seize TM without an initial hearing.
If TM was using a "security" in the form of a Ponzi, then why did the SEC do a sneak attack to seize TM? Not only that, but even the court records prove that TM had several miilions more money than what was immediately owed to members. And the courts' record shows that TM had sales of services above that of just the adpacks.
When the government says that TM only had a small percentage of sales above the adpacks they don't take into account the fact that TM's $50 adpacks only earned an additional $5 on top of the $50. Thus, TM's business model didn't have to sell significantly higher advertising services above the adpacks because TM only paid an additional $5 on top of every $50.
Not only that but when the government breaks down the numbers and says the additional revenue in other ad sales was small in comparison to the adpacks, the government uses that argument to create confusion by sensationalizing the numbers in the layperson's head.
For example, did you know Amazon only recently started to turn a profit and that it's overall profit margins are minuscule in comparison to it's overhead? Most businesses use a lot of money to make a little money in comparison to its overhead and that's what we saw in TM- except TM simply devised a way to spread that huge overhead over the course of its members and therefore return all of the profits to its members.
Thusly, we can say that TM was a business of members. But the government doesn't want us to work together, remember? And that's how the government further created chaos around TM's business model: by not acknowledging that TM's business model was a business by its members and for its members. TM had no outlet for the revenue it earned except back to its members, but the government's case against TM doesn't acknowledge that truism and that's the government's way to distort the truth in that case.
And thus, the reason the point of pulling gold from backing money serves its true purpose- so money and the people using money would always dwell in chaos and confusion.
Cryptocurrency was thusly invented as a way to establish an immutable method of accountability around our universal value context. To establish that value in any form can be accounted for.
The problem that cryptocurrency did not solve was that of exchange. The only way to really establish an understanding of exchange is via dialogue towards universal understanding of the intent and purpose. But cryptocurrency's problem was that it was just dropped on the populous with an encrypted name and expected people to just pick it up and run with it. There was no method inherently in place for activating that exchange so that left a void on people's understanding of its intent.
The consequence of that behavior is that the early adopters of cryptocurrency thought they could just buy into cryptocurrency and ride its wave to the top of financial freedom! The problem with that mentality was that people didn't realize that honest markets allow for no free rides. Unless an honest mechanism was put in place to actually facilitate exchange of cryptocurrency for real goods and services, then the market was going to shake things up a bit until the people gets it right.
And that's what 2018 proved.
Now, cryptocurrency is in a race to correct its previous failure of not actually facilitating exchange. The problem is that its trying to do so without simply educating the populous on its intentions. And until cryptocurrency is borne first of an exchange-mandate, and second as storage of value- instead of vice versa- then we can continue to see the lack of honest cryptocurrency marketplace do to us what the marketplace did to us all in 2018.
Think about it.#Iajs
